


La Fine dell'Eternita

by legarevirtuoso



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-05
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 21:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/398391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legarevirtuoso/pseuds/legarevirtuoso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. Or, why time travel is not good for one's sanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Fine dell'Eternita

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Spoilers for Choice and end of Future Arc. Mentions of rape, foul language, limes, general 10051 weirdness, death, and how to ruin the time stream.
> 
> I came to the conclusion when I started this fic that since probably no one was going to read it anyway, I could abuse Shoichi all I liked and it’d be awesome(because that’s good drama… right?). A thousand or so words in I realized that writing this pairing makes me wibble, I have no control over my own muse, Byakuran scares me, Shoichi needs antacids like Ryohei needs a tranq dart in his water, and I probably won’t do this pairing again without someone to hold my hand.
> 
> Archive loading.

Irie Shoichi is more than just a witness to the end of the world. He is the instigator and the harbinger, the instrument of his own demise. As a result he has an alarming tendency to miss his old life. Not this life with a childlike boss and the rubble of modern civilization serving as counterpoint to the traditional skyline view from his bedroom window, but instead he misses the one where monotony was everything and a sense of misfortune only meant ‘my neighborhood is getting rowdy’. He misses his mother and sister, that silly crying cow baby and that initial mess of nightmares that plague him to this day. The memories hurt, burn as he swallows them in an attempt to forget those halcyon days. Sometimes Shoichi wonders why the past has to result in such a fiery end, and when that though passes he thinks of why in the world Cosa Nostra seems to play the biggest part in it.

Then he rolls over and sees white hair on his pillow and a marshmallow halfway to ever smiling lips, and suddenly Shoichi remembers why.

“Good morning Sho-chan~!,” is his daily reminder of the horrible deeds he must engineer. Once, he tried to trick his future self into hating this man and failed so miserably he never tried again. Byakuran is too cheery for Shoichi to truly hate, too lovingly possessive for him to escape. Shoichi is forced to view the man with the same outlook the German people had for Adolf Hitler (up until and including during the man’s slide into dementia and subsequent outbreak of widespread chaos), loves him with one part of his being and desperately wishes he was dead with the other.

Shoichi is not a morning person, Sun flame and it’s supposed activating properties be damned, and Byakuran is kind enough to kiss him into coherency. Each kiss comes with a story, a tantalizing bit of information carefully delivered with the intent of jumpstarting Byakuran’s favorite little genius.

Once for the world where the flames drown out the sky and a game of tactics was more of an invitation to a bloody slaughterhouse.

Twice for the time Shoichi danced the minuet with a masked man just to keep up the masquerade that he was really in love with a murderer.

Thrice because Byakuran loves the way Shoichi gasps in the quiet dark of oblivion. The rest of the count is lost in the ensuing tumble of limbs and undignified orchestra of screams and moans. It’s like this too often for anyone to even notice, and Shoichi is too sleepy to do anything but draw his knees to his chest and beg for something beyond what precognitive time travel has taught him. The weight of sin is far too heavy to shove off and bores down on his conscience until it ulcers, ferried along into madness by the smell of sugar sweet nothing and promises of unrelenting carnage. It’s like this every second Tuesday, and sometimes every third Thursday if Byakuran can’t stop himself, and quite frankly it seems a bit suspicious to Shoichi.

Then again, everything these days whispers of mutiny and subterfuge to the paranoid Sun Funeral Wreath.

There are demons in his bathwater that reflect milky eyes and a liar’s smile, and Shoichi has started taking showers to avoid the hidden accusations in his mind’s eye. His closest friends from college can’t talk to him without a Cervello to introduce them, and Shoichi has grown tired of the shackles his titles cause. When the memory timer wore off Shoichi had the distinct pleasure of being the only man in the known universe to remember over two hundred different versions of the end of the world in less than fifteen seconds and spent a considerable amount of time ranting to Spanner about his migraines until the other man held up a blueprint to what he called a ‘Strau Mosca’ and dared Shoichi to do something better. And when Shoichi’s answer is to throw caution to the wind and let the Vongola pinpoint him as the most dangerous man alive (there is something to be said about being the only honest man in a pub you shouldn’t even be frequenting), Byakuran frets and sends his dear away to the other side of the world for his own relative ‘safety’.

When the Melone Base is built, he spends a good half of the opening celebration hunched over his toilet, praying that Byakuran won’t stop the plans Shoichi has set in motion. It’ll be a few years before he realizes that Byakuran always knew and simply didn’t care to upset his delicate Shoichi any more that was necessary, and for that Shoichi is understandably infuriated before he comes to the conclusion that either way this needs to be done for the sake of the continued happiness of multiple realities.

Sometimes, usually in the middle of some delightful mission breakdown that involves Shoichi having a conversation with a billboard sized Byakuran-face and manhole cover sized jellybeans that punctuate the conversation with an ever changing rainbow of annihilation, he comes to the conclusion that this entire ‘save the future’ plan with Sawada and Hibari is doomed to failure but gods damn it all to hell he’s going to try anyway. (Besides, if he doesn’t at least try his absolute hardest and die doing it, Shoichi is ninety nine point nine percent certain that that infamous Foundation head will find a way through the entire Millefiore just to bite him to death for ruining a perfectly good plan.)

Periodic vacations to Italy end in the same way as a hormone driven teenager could have wanted, usually with Shoichi wonderfully naked and Byakuran preening in his own psychopathic way. “Ne, Sho-chan. Hold me and watch the apocalypse.” Those wings will be the death of him and only Shoichi and the Vongola know it, but somehow Shoichi can’t resist the urge to open his arms to the destroyer of the world and kisses his feverish brow with a wild sort of abandon. “All right…” And this leads to that, hours later Shoichi will rest his head on his knees in the safety of the bathroom and breathe until the world stops spinning and the memories come with each beat of his traitor’s heart.

If this all goes to hell, he’ll walk into Vendicare with a smile on his face and arms spread wide for the firing squad.

When Vongola X makes his appearance at last Shoichi can’t even breathe a sigh for relief because he has more little plans to set in motion and a world to finally save. But he plays the dutiful minion and sends Lippi in his stead, damns Rokudo and knows sacrifices have to be made. The ulcers come back and he spends half of his Will moving the Base and the other half keeping himself in the upright position so that Byakuran won’t see his worry. Shoichi doesn’t lie, spends his nights staring at the pillow next to his and knows that he’ll never see the other man in his bed again. The battle of Choice is easier than the destruction of his Mare ring and the Melone Base, and the decision to die for the cause is easier than faking his love for Byakuran. But he’s running on half empty and Byakuran has that look in his eye that bodes ill for everyone involved. “I’m the one who made Byakuran-san this way! I can’t run away from this now!” It’s his fault and he’ll see it to the end, because if he hadn’t woken up Byakuran he wouldn’t have had to see the world die more times than Rokudo has come back to life.

“So that’s how you see it?”

They’re doomed from the start, because Byakuran has issues with letting go off the things he likes, and Byakuran likes having Shoichi around as his consort about as much as he likes having Uni as his doll.

Losing breaks Shoichi, sends him spiraling down a path of ‘oh god why’s and ‘let this be a lie’s, and Byakuran is more than happy to wait for the Vongola to accept their loss. What that shadow dictator is not prepared to do is let Shoichi have his way, and in the back of his mind Shoichi remembers another conversation much like this one that ended in his being tied to a bed and Byakuran muttering somewhere above his navel that “Wives should just be quiet and appreciate being loved, ne Sho-chan?”. And the rest is history, because Shoichi never really stays coherent enough to pay attention.

But the final battle he does remember (brief though it is even in all its horror and heart wrenching brutality), and the worst feeling in the world is seeing Byakuran lose what’s left of his mind and being burned alive by a fifteen year old boy. Not even the memories of countless worlds in decline are enough to salve the loss of the only person in the world Shoichi has ever come to love. When he sends the Vongola back he fakes his smile, waits until time dissolves back into itself and the crisis is averted by virtue of nonexistence. Twenty five year old Irie Shoichi goes in a fit of tears, clutching the broken remains of the fake Sun Mare ring to his heart while bundled up in sad pile of every article of Byakuran’s closet that he could lay his hands on in five days.

“Baby we did this… don’t miss it.”

He wakes up fifteen all over again, cracking voice and a wellspring of knowledge at his beck and call that makes his carefully monotonous life all the more difficult for the first five days. Shoichi settles back to normality with all the caution of a war survivor, kisses his mother and swears to his sister that no matter what happens the cow-print wearing baby is most likely not going away and to get used to the apology packages. Schoolwork has never been easier and suddenly Shoichi has all the time in the world to truly live and doesn’t know what to do with it all. And on a second Tuesday, a month into his return and four weeks and two days of carefully ignoring the assembled Vongola by merely avoiding their presence, Shoichi has had it with playing by the rules. He’s been to the ruined future more times than he cares to admit, has awoken a single man to the possibilities of infinite knowledge, created Napoleon Bonaparte’s second cousin thrice removed, drugged a little girl into a near coma, made an underground building that would make Ernő Rubik cry with envy, and somehow managed to do it all with a series of holes in his stomach averaging at the size of a thumbtack.

It will be a long time before Shoichi gets his happy ending, but for now he’ll settle for a constant weekly supply of letters from a charming pen pal who lives for sweet foods and sends the most marvelous ‘thank you’ notes in exchange for packages of marshmallows. And if Shoichi somehow manages to convince his pen pal to enroll at MIT with him so much the better, because it’s lonely looking across his pillow and not seeing pale white staring back. His mother can’t wait to meet her son’s future husband (because really, anyone willing to put up with her eccentric son is welcome in her house and she has a daughter to provide her with cuddly grandchildren), and has a binder of real estate possibilities all ready for their perusal. He’s never been gladder to leave home, waves goodbye to the Vongola and promises to be back in the summer.

And Shoichi’s future is waiting for him at an airport terminal, a smile stretching wider than humanly possible. “Did you miss me, Sho-chan?” And for once he hasn’t anything witty to say, tears in his eyes and a sudden appreciation for the wonders of time travel and magical babies with too much time on their hands.

“Where have you been?”

“Right here waiting of course!”


End file.
